Entotsu no mieru basho (1953) Online

An interesting film from the classical period of Japanese cinema, the 1950s. The action takes place in a poor neighborhood around Tokyo (which seems almost a slum) during the hard years of the early postwar in Japan. Near the neighborhood are located four giant smoke spewing chimneys. A motif in the film is that depending on where you are located, a chimney can cover other one, so you only see three, or even two of them (this is alluded in the Japanese title).

In a modest house in the neighborhood lives salary man Ogata (Ken Uehara), with his long suffering wife Hiroko, a war widow (played by Mizoguchi regular Kinuyo Tanaka). In the second floor, two tenants live in different rooms, a young man and a woman (she is played by the great actress Hideko Takamine), who slowly seems to be falling in love. Though they are quite poor and struggle to make ends meet, Ogata and Hiroko live a seemingly tranquil life, only interrupted by his jealousy when he learns that unknown to him, and in order to earn a few more yens for the household she has taken a job as a seller in the bicycle race track stadium. Their seeming happiness is suddenly interrupted when someone, apparently her former husband she has claimed died in the war, leaves a crying baby in their house. The couple not only has to deal now with the baby but also with her seeming dishonesty about her past.

The cultural mores and some melodramatic flourishes of the movie seem dated now, but the film is interesting, the direction well paced and the camera-work fluid. Directed by Heinosuke Gosho.

Another strong postwar melodrama of hard, hard times in Japan. This one, however, has the heartbreak undercut with a certain hopefulness and humor. A little uneven at times, and the character who starts out as the storyteller falls into the background. Still, if you get a chance to see this(it's not on video or DVD) jump at it. Nine out of ten.